Stuart Firestein is a neuroscientist at Columbia University. In this TED Talk, he explains that science should be about what we don’t know more than about what we do know. Knowledge should just make us ask more questions. When we evaluate as part of our course, the idea of identifying limitations is based in part on identifying what else needs to be done. That’s been a theme both in the Biopsychology in Year 2 and the Memory in Year 1 on which we have been working over the last week. Firestein is making a case for thinking about science learning and science education in a different sort of way.

2) Understanding Circadian Rhythms

We’ve been working on these in Year 2 over the last couple of weeks. It is hard to understand how or why the body follows a rhythm of roughly 24 hours even when, as in the famous Michel Siffre studies, people are not exposed to the natural cycle of light and dark. This article explains what we know and what we don’t know based on current research. Research has moved on from putting people in caves to see what happened to using non-human animal research and gene manipulation to understand the precise mechanisms by which the sleep-wake cycle works. It turns out to be more complicated than we think. There are more mechanisms than those in the SCN for controlling sleeping and waking. The SCN can be thought of as the conductor of the orchestra, playing a co-ordinating role and acting as a backup when other systems are not activated. Quite how this works is still being researched.

3) Communication Between Hemispheres

Also this week in Year 2, we have been working on hemispheric lateralisation and split brain studies, including Sperry’s research. An evaluation point we make in relation to this is that current research can use a range of methods unavailable when Sperry first did his research in order to understand how different sides of the brain connect. This article explains one such piece of research about communication between brain halves and ageing.

4) Testosterone And Sex Differences In Human Behaviour

Cordelia Fine and Joe Herbert have both written books about gender differences. Here, they debate the influence of testosterone on our ideas about gender. This debate includes key issues and approaches: gender bias, nature-nurture, free will and determinism, biological reductionism. It shows that these issues and approaches are still alive and important.

5) Definitions And Classification Of Psychological Disorder

This is a bit of the course which sometimes seems to be isolated and disconnected to the other things we do. It is something students sometimes overlook when preparing for exams. This article by Vaughan Bell explains some of the broader questions about how we define abnormality and diagnose disorders. Please don’t read it if you are likely to be offended by a very rude word about three quarters of the way through. Joanna Moncrieff’s piece here covers similar issues.

6) Case Studies

In our courses, there is sometimes some confusion about what case studies are. Here is an article about some famous case studies.

This article explores some of the issues with researching the effects of e-cigarettes. To understand the long-term harm, researchers need to find people who use e-cigarettes who have never smoked. That turns out to be difficult because they don’t want to volunteer to take part.

2) Contagious Behaviour

This article is a more academic take than the article in last week’s blog about riots. Specifically, it challenges the idea of “contagion”, the term used in the late nineteenth century by Gustav LeBon to describe the behaviour of crowds. Instead of contagion, it uses the idea of social influence through social identity to explain social influence. People adopted an anti-police identity and felt empowered by that identity when the police response was not what they expected.

3) Extreme Male Brain Theory And Autism

This article reports research which looks at the face shape of people with and without autism. The theory is that people with autism have more masculine faces. This can be explained by greater exposure to testosterone in the womb. This sounds interesting even though there is no direct evidence of these increased testosterone levels. The article also points out that the extreme male brain theory is challenged by people who see autism as “a disorder of sexual differentiation or androgyny”. The issue of autism and gender therefore becomes very complicated. We use in our course the idea that clinicians use the same diagnostic approach for males and females with autism even though there are gender differences in the way the condition is expressed. This is a good example of beta-bias. Issues of gender appear to extend further, relating to questions of fundamental cause.

In both Year 2 groups, we spent the first lesson looking at the findings and conclusions of research projects from last summer. From each of them, there are implications for student well being. Furthermore, staff training earlier in the week focused on staff and student well-being. This article is relevant to this context. It looks at research into the effect of mindfulness in schools. The meta-analysis shows that there is a small effect of MBIs on helping children to feel good and improve their thinking skills but no clear effect on behaviour or academic outcomes. It is striking that so little is known about something which is so important. No research has been done into the effectiveness of mindfulness for different age groups. There is nothing about any negative consequences of mindfulness. However, a huge study is underway to address these issues. The MYRIAD study will report in 2021. There is some video about this here.

2) London Riots

As part of our work on social influence, we will be looking this term in Year 1 at how theories about types of conformity can be used to explain why people take part in riots. One type of conformity is identification: this occurs when an individual adopts a role as a member of a group. In a riot, people have to decide quickly which side they are on and act and think accordingly. This article talks about the emergence of a shared identity as members of rival gangs joined together to target the police. One problem with this type of research is that it appears to condone criminal behaviour. The article deals with this issue.

3) Bigorexia

In our course, we look at the biological and psychological explanations of anorexia nervosa, a condition which affects mostly females. This article explains how some of the behaviours of adolescent males in relation to dieting, exercise and muscle development look remarkably like the clinical characteristics of anorexia nervosa.

4) Nature, Nurture And Marmite

This article uses a recently published piece of research to explore what we do and don’t know about nature and nurture.

5) The Trial And Error Approach To Mental Health Treatment

This article and accompanying podcast explains what this is and how we might work to get around it.

6) Mental Health Apps For Adolescent Mental Health

As well as mindfulness dealt with above, developing apps for young people to help them access mental health support is seen as a way of supporting well-being. This article reviews evidence for the effectiveness of these apps and finds it wanting.

7) Latest Research On Working Memory

I’ve been working on an exam question specifically on the idea that the working memory model is out of date. This article is an effective rebuttal to that criticism. It shows how brain imaging is being used to understand different phases of development of working memory.

This article looks at how researchers argue about male and female brains. In our course, we understand that alpha bias involves exaggerating differences between the genders while beta bias involves diminishing them. From a feminist perspective, differences have been exaggerated while some neuroscientists maintain that male and female brains are structurally different. The article explains why this is important and how advances in our understanding of the plasticity and complexity of the brain might develop the debate further.

2) Before Babies Understand Words, They Understand Tones Of Voice

This article follows on from the one last week on number. It suggests that babies can understand tones of voice within the first few months of life. It is a development of work by Baillargeon which investigates children’s abilities by making inferences based on findings from controlled, laboratory procedures.

3) The End Of Schizophrenia

We don’t cover schizophrenia as part of our course but the issues which this article raises apply to many of the things we cover. Thinking about schizophrenia as a single condition goes against what the neuroscience is now saying and may not be the most helpful way of deciding on treatment.

4) Music And Memory

Memory, as we keep saying, is a complex process of construction depending on many different areas of the brain. This article reflects on how music can move us and remind us.

5) No More Boys And Girls

This series is still available on iPlayer. It looks at what happened when a psychologist worked with a group of primary children to challenge gender stereotypes. There is a review of this series here.

6) Antidepressants Work

That is the conclusion from a large scale review of evidence discussed in this article. Our course focuses on cognitive explanations and treatments for depression. This article reminds us that there is a biological narrative which we need to understand as well.

7) Understanding Movement

When we study localisation of the brain, we look at how movement is controlled by the motor cortex. This article looks at research in mice. It shows how far we have got in understanding that there is much more to movement than a signal from one part of the brain. The basal ganglia, which we look at in the context of OCD, are also involved.

This series is being repeated on BBC4 at the moment. The website for the programme is here and you can see the programmes via iPlayer. I liked the section on brain plasticity which I have incorporated into the webpage we will use this term.

2) Erasing Memories

The idea that it is possible to erase memories has been around for a while. This article by Mo Costandi looks at a recent piece of work in this area and offers an insight into where the research might take us.

3) Gender Biases

Following the controversy related to Google in the last couple of weeks, this article has something sensible and balanced to say about how to address gender balance in science.

4) Psychopathy

The BBC is going to broadcast a Horizon documentary about psychopaths. The link is here. Uta Frith has some very interesting things to say about psychopathy, particularly in relation to autism, in this conversation.

5) Newborn Babies And Numbers

Baillargeon’s research seeks to show how children are born with a physical reasoning system. It has led to further work from other researchers to extend our understanding of what new born children can do. Here is a piece about their sense of number.

This episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage includes a discussion of mind and brain. Wide ranging and surprising.

2) And Also On The Radio ….

This programme takes what we think we know about Pavlov and challenges it.

3) Gender And The Brain

This article looks at arguments about gender and the brain arising from the controversy surrounding Google and the dismissal of an employee who challenged policies designed to promote gender equality. It argues that differences between males and females are more to do with context and expectation than innate difference, using ideas about brain plasticity.

4) Brain Myths

One of the ideas about doing Psychology as an academic subject is that you learn to distinguish fact from fiction about how and why we do the things we do. This article suggests that the message does not always get through even to people studying at quite high levels.

5) The Brain As A Computer

This article looks at the brain as a computer. It looks at the reciprocal relationship between engineering and neuroscience. How we think about the brain is a reflection of our technological understanding and how engineering develops is a reflection of what we understand about how the brain works.

6) Depression And The Immune System

This link takes you to a podcast about depression and the immune system. The key finding is that people with depression who also show heightened response of the immune system are resistant to the effect of antidepressants. This article from the University Of Cambridge explains the latest findings about the genetic basis of these differences. Depression, on this model, is not all in the mind.

7) E-cigarettes

An important argument about e-cigarettes is that they prevent people from smoking tobacco. This article challenges this argument. It suggests that adolescents who use e-cigarettes are more likely to try real cigarettes than those who don’t. This is a particularly strong effect in those who do not have friends who smoke. This has important implications for how we understand risk factors in addiction and how we then address it.

8) Understanding Freud’s Legacy

It was a bit of a surprise when the psychodynamic approach and Freud’s theories came back into our course. This article, a review of a book critical of Freud, explains what critics get wrong about Freud and what we might gain from his approach.

This article looks at the effect of smartphones on children and adolescents. It challenges claims by Jean Twenge, whose work we look at in the context of locus of control, about the damaging effect of phones on well-being. It’s useful for us in a couple of ways. Firstly, it raises some research methods issues about correlation and cause and about publication bias. Secondly, it ties in with what we have noticed about the protective effect of mobile phones and about the need to find a middle course in the research projects done last term.

2) Brain Mapping

We talk about mapping the brain in Psychology. I have just been practising an exam question which includes a simple map of the brain. This article explains some of the issues with mapping. Mapping is not a neutral activity.

3) CBT For Eating Disorders

One of the arguments for psychological explanations for anorexia nervosa is that CBT is effective in treating it. This paper is about a meta-analysis of research into the effect of CBT on quality of life in people with eating disorders. The research suggests that the impact is positive. There are however familiar problems: what the people in the control condition are doing, whether negative findings have been published, establishing criteria for inclusion in the meta-analysis. The clearest problem is that of how we define whether someone with an eating disorder has really got better. In this areas of research, recovery’, ‘relapse’ and ‘remission’ are used without anyone being clear about what they mean.

4) Punishment and Reinforcement

The difference between these concepts is explained here along with some other terms that people tend to confuse.

5) Tobacco Advertising

This article explains some of the techniques used by tobacco companies in targeting young people. Addiction to nicotine and gambling are to some extent socially learnt. In our course, we look at the influence of family and peers as risk factors. This article reminds us we need to look more widely.

That is the claim of this article. The development on which it focuses is social development, specifically the response of new borns to the still face procedure which is explained here. Not only do infants respond to this procedure but they also seem to learn from it, suggesting that from birth they are able to regulate their own behaviour and influence the behaviour of others.

2) CBT Versus Counselling For Depression

Counselling tends to be seen as ineffective. Not only is there a lack of systematic evidence for its effectiveness but it is seen to be inferior to therapies such as CBT because they address fundamental psychological processes. The kindest thing we can say is that the humanistic approach has done us a favour by emphasising the importance of the therapeutic relationship but does not give us the tools to make people well who have complex things wrong with them. This article is therefore interesting because it looks at data from IAPT for cases of moderate to severe depression, comparing counselling to CBT. Counselling comes out as not inferior to CBT. This is important because it moves us back to the idea that it is the therapeutic relationship and the competence of the therapist which matters more than the process which is undertaken. The challenge therefore is to be able to define better “quality” and “competence”.

3) Canine Compulsive Disorder

This article explores the version of OCD which dogs get. It is well worth reading for several reasons. Firstly, it looks at how insights from dogs are moving towards a more integrated account of OCD. The problem we highlight when studying OCD is that we have a neural account based on serotonin, a neural account based on hyperactivity in the basal ganglia and a genetic account based on the PTPRD gene is that the science is fragmentary. Each account stands by itself without any links to the others. The research in this article points to genetic variations connected with glutamate which have been discovered in dogs and to drug interventions based on glutamate which seem to work. Secondly, the article challenges the idea that we can’t generalise from non-human to human animals. Thirdly, the article interweaves the personal and the scientific: the author describes her experience of OCD. It does so powerfully and effectively.

4) Brain Plasticity

This idea is central to our study of Biopsychology. The researcher who did much to develop it, Marian Diamond, has just died. Here is her obituary.

5) P Values

We were pleased when working on the research projects in the summer term to see some significant results. Correlations emerged where the chances of making a Type 1 error were less than 5% and the null hypothesis was rejected. There is however a debate about whether a p value of 0.05 tells us anything at all meaningful about a study. That debate is developed here.

6) Social Mobility

Here is an article about the genetic basis of educational achievement and social mobility. I posted a linked video a couple of weeks ago.

7) Public Understanding Of Science

Here is an article about media representation of a study about video gaming. The risks are misrepresented. Here is an article about the complexity of research into the effect of concussion in sport.

This article acts as a commentary on “To The Bone”, a film about anorexia nervosa which is now available on Netflix. The article challenges the idea that watching the film could be harmful or triggering for people at risk of developing anorexia. To claim this, the article claims, is to misrepresent the complexity of the condition. The article explores the idea that there is a socio-cultural aspect to anorexia, arising not simply from exposure to images of thin women but rather from the challenge of developing an identity as a female in a contemporary society. For the purposes of our course, this means thinking about using different levels of explanation to understand anorexia nervosa.

2) False Memories

Julia Shaw researches false memories and has just published a book about factors which influence false memories. This article covers at some length the milestones of research in this area, going back to the research of Elizabeth Loftus.

3) Left Brain, Right Brain

This video from TED-Ed explains some of the myths concerning left and right brain, making a link to the work of Broca and Wernicke in the late nineteenth century. In connection with this, here is an article about brain plasticity from a year ago.

4) Parents And Alcohol

This article explains a meta-analysis of studies looking at how parents influence the consumption of alcohol of their children. It therefore provides a useful update for the research which we study here. It is no great surprise that having alcohol available at home, providing alcohol and drinking alcohol at home were parental behaviours associated with earlier initiation and higher alcohol use/misuse.

5) A Couple On Gender

On average, males and females do not differ greatly in the way they think and behave. However, there are striking differences between males and females in conditions such as dyslexia, depression and autism. Understanding these differences and the biology behind them may enable us to understand and then address these conditions more effectively. This article explains what is being done to understand how male and female brains are different. This article looks at research into concussion. Although not strictly speaking a piece of Psychology, it is a good example of how beta-bias works. Nobody had thought until recently that there might be gender differences in the consequences of a blow to the head.

6) Brain Inflammation And Obesity

This article describes research into the link between brain inflammation and obesity. It is useful for us because it focuses on the role of leptin. Inflammation caused by overeating may cause the hypothalamus to be less sensitive to the release of leptin. This is important because the role of leptin in the development of obesity has not been well understood. Cases where people have a genetic mutation which prevents the production of leptin are rare. This research suggests that leptin may play a role in many more cases of obesity.

7) Genome Wide Association Study For Depression

In our course, we study the cognitive approach to explaining and treating depression. In order to evaluate this, we consider evidence about the serotonin transporter gene which suggests that there is a genetic basis to the experience of depression. The problem with focusing on one gene is that its effects are likely to be small. That is why genome wide association studies are more useful because they record the impact of many gene variations on the development of a disorder from a very large sample. This study uses the genomes of over 320,000 individuals to identify genetic variations associated with excitatory pathways in the brain. That means that we have to take biological explanations seriously.

8) Attachment Type And Social Networks

We are used to the idea that attachment type influences romantic relationships, for example through the work of Hazan and Shaver. This study takes the research one step further. Rather than looking at the influence of attachment type on relationships one at a time, it looks at the influence on the network of relationships we develop.

Eating disorders is an area of Psychology where alpha bias has persisted. They are seen as being peculiarly female problems. This is challenged in this article by Nigel Owens, the rugby referee. The article reminds us that eating disorders can affect males as well as females. It also reminds us that the origins of disorders are complex. In this article, Owens talks about depression and sexuality. The article talks about the effect of media representations. Research relating body image to medial representations of thinness in girls is well established. I don’t know if the same research has been done on males. If it hasn’t, this could be seen as an example of beta bias.

2) The Unconscious

The psychodynamic approach is based on the idea of an unconscious mind. It seeks to explain why we do things even when we are not conscious of the reasons. This article explains how Freud thought about the unconscious 100 or more years ago and how we might think about it now.

3) Studying Classroom Strategies

We had a question in the mock AS exam about addressing the criticism that studies of memory are unrealistic. This is the theme of this article from the Learning Scientists. It looks at what happens when findings reliably demonstrated in a laboratory, that spacing practice and practising retrieval have a positive effect on learning, are tested in a real classroom on things children actually have to learn. The findings of one study go against the conventional wisdom. The authors try to explain why.

4) The Evolution Of Disgust

Evolutionary explanations of food preference use the idea of disgust. We don’t want to eat new things because we find them disgusting. The first part of this podcast explains the impact of disgust on the choices we make and what we might do about them.

5) The Genetic Basis Of Educational Achievement

This video explains the findings of research about educational attainment. You would have thought that the reason why children often have similar educational outcomes to their parents was down to environment. This study suggests that there is a genetic component. It’s notable that as well as using DNA analysis, the study also compares MZ and DZ twins.

6) Variant Of Unknown Significance

This article is not strictly speaking about Psychology but has implications for the way we think about genes. As testing becomes more sophisticated for a variety of medical conditions, people increasingly get results which show variants of unknown significance. They have unusual sequences in their DNA but nobody knows whether or not this is bad news. We need, it is claimed, to think of a DNA test not as a pregnancy test but as a weather report. That makes us rethink the idea of genes for a disorder.

7) Memories

When we study the multistore model of memory, we focus on the idea of the brain having a storage system. This article encourages us to think of memory in a different way. Memory at its core is a change to a system that alters the way that system works in the future. The sum total of those experiences shape the way in which neurons are organised and connected inside our brains. We are therefore what we remember.

8) Cultural Variations In Self-Control

This article explains what happened when Mischel’s marshmallow test was carried out in rural Cameroon. Children’s response seems to be based on the extent to which they experience authoritarian parenting within a strongly defined social structure whether they are in Cameroon or in Germany. That means that we need to continue to be aware of the difference between individualistic and collectivistic cultures but cannot understand differences in behaviour purely in those terms.

9) Two Genes For Autism

This article explains the role of two genes in the development of autism. They do two different things and they account for a tiny proportion of cases of autism. However, understanding what they do might be the key to understanding the routes which lead to the symptoms of autism.

10) The Diet Paradox

Here is a round up of some of the reasons why diets fail and what we might do about it.